Reality check: ISPs do not understand content

opinion Australian ISPs, regulators and the Government need to take a step back and stop fooling themselves that future telecommunications competition will rest on ISPs’ ability to provide bundled video content services to users. The reality is that ISPs aren’t good at this task and customers don’t want them to do it.

Over the past few weeks, an old dream has begun to resurface strongly in the ongoing conversation around the future of Australia’s telecommunications industry. In this dream, ISPs and telcos are able to diversity beyond their roots providing telecommunications services such as broadband and telephony to customers. Under this so-called ‘triple-play’ vision, ISPs would add services further up the networking stack, providing video services such as films and television episodes on top of their network infrastructure.

The desire to realise this dream has become very evident in a number of comments made by industry figures over the past year or so.

In a briefing in Sydney yesterday, ACCC telecommunications commissioner Ed Willett said the nature of telecommunications competition could change as the powerful National Broadband Network rolled out, with ISPs competing with content providers for access to video streaming rights. This new world could see ISPs forced to compete with an emerging class of rivals such as Apple and Google for “the primary customer relationship”, Willett said, according to this article published by iTNews. The Australian also has more on this. One can’t help but feel the regulator already has its eye strongly on this new market opportunity, given the provisions it forced on Foxtel in its $1.9 billion buyout of Austar, which ensured some of the pair’s key content holdings would be unlocked for competitive use by ISPs.

Across town, the nation’s biggest telco Telstra was reportedly discussing its “media strategy” with the aid of ex-Television NZ chief Rick Ellis, with the idea raised that the company could make a bid to buy pay TV ConsMedia, which, along with Telstra, part-owns Foxtel and also has interests in Fox Sports Australia.

Meanwhile, at an investment conference held by Macquarie Bank, top-tier ISP iiNet was spruiking its growth strategy. In a broadband market which is experiencing negligible amounts of growth, a core plank of iiNet’s strategy — as with every other ISP — is getting its customers to buy more from it. This means, according to the company’s presentation, getting more people to sign up for its “TV Bundle” — the FetchTV set-top box through which iiNet can get its customers to pay for TV and movies delivered over their broadband connection.

And the nation’s number two telco Optus is also certainly taking the content opportunity seriously.

Yes, yes, for Australian telcos at the moment, you can’t escape the feeling that the future is very much about content. Lovely, juicy, value-adding content, streamed on their networks, delivering extra profit margins and locking customers into triple-play or even quad-play (with mobile) bundles. It sure sounds like a lovely vision. But there’s just one problem: If you dig a bit beneath the surface a bit, it’s hard not to escape the conclusion that it’s a false hope.

For starters, it’s important to realise that the ISPs’ forays into content provision over their networks over the past decade have broadly failed.

In total, iiNet has approximately 860,000 broadband customers. But in the almost two years since it launched FetchTV, it has succeeded in converting only 20,000 (two percent) of those customers into FetchTV customers as well. With that abysmal run rate, it’s hard not to make a case right now that iiNet should simply abandon its FetchTV efforts altogether. The project certainly isn’t making iiNet any money. Optus, which launched its own FetchTV offering in Octover 2011, is no doubt doing no better than iiNet on that front right now.

Telstra, which has many millions more broadband customers than iiNet, has fared a little better; in late March this year, the company revealed that it had sold more than 300,000 units of its T-Box Internet video set-top box. Given that the company has some 2.5 million broadband connections using its network, that’s a much better sign-up rate than iiNet’s FetchTV service enjoys — about 12 percent. But it’s not enough to call the platform a success just yet.

But wait, there’s more.

The recent wave of Internet video services launched by the telcos are only their most recent foray into the area of content provided over their telecommunications networks. Before there was content on fixed broadband, there was content on mobile.

A July 2007 article published by the ABC chronicles how Telstra had then launched a service which would allow customers to watch television programs on their mobile phones — for a charge. At the time, then-Telstra executive Justin Milne, who was then in charge of Telstra’s BigPond ISP unit, hyped the device up as a revolution.

“We are inventing a new medium here and what I earnestly hope is that by giving them some slots and making them available to Australian producers to help us invent this whole short form of TV, that the folks will vote with their feet and they’ll buy those shows, and those will become the most popular shows and so we’ll produce more of them,” he reportedly said.

At the time, mobile television was all the rage. Telstra was doing it, Optus was doing it, Vodafone was doing it, and the then-separate Hutchison Telecommunications, developer of the ‘3’ network in Australia, was doing it. You could buy individual ‘packs’ through the various companies which would give you access to various slices of content. The only problem was, these types of services never took off. For a time, Australians were interested, but after a while the interest dropped off and the various telco’s efforts to pump content through their mobile networks slowly failed and were largely abandoned.

It wasn’t the first time that this had been tried in Australia, either.

Those of you with slightly longer memories might recall that in late 204, Telstra launched what was then described as an ‘i-mode’ service (imported from Japan, where it was quite popular) through its mobile devices. At the time, the idea was that content providers like eBay, Citibank, CNN, Fox Sports, Whereis, Flight Centre and The Weather Channel would provide portals through Telstra’s mobile devices that would allow customers to buy content directly on their mobile.

But, just like the mobile content wave which would follow it a few years, later, i-mode bombed in Australia and is now remembered as one of Telstra’s greatest mobile-related failures locally.
Now, I don’t want to imply that every attempt by an Australian telco to diversify into content services has failed.

Probably the most high-profile success in Australia in this area — and, by now, you’re wondering why I haven’t noted this elephant in the room — is Telstra’s 50 percent investment in pay TV company Foxtel, and the provision of extremely profitable Foxtel services over Telstra’s HFC cable network. Formed in 1995 through a joint venture between Telstra and News Corporation, Foxtel has historically made a stack of money for both, and you can only get access to it if you have Telstra’s HFC cable running to your door.

Now, it’s true that Foxtel has been a success. But what’s important to realise is that Telstra has had very little to do with that.

Telstra’s role in Foxtel is essentially limited to two areas. Firstly, Telstra is a 50 percent investor in Foxtel, so it has put in a stack of money into the company. And secondly, Telstra maintains the HFC cable network over which the Foxtel services are provided. This is simplifying things a bit, given the complex relationship between Foxtel and Telstra, but when you break it down, you quickly realise that all of the content-related work that goes into Foxtel is done in a separate company to Telstra — one focused on content. The success of Foxtel is based on the fact that Telstra kept its nose out of the content and focused on what it does best — providing telecommunications carriage services to get that content to users.

And every other area where Telstra has attempted to leverage the Foxtel relationship itself, it appears to have broadly failed in.

Telstra’s attempts to provide access to Foxtel content through its mobile phones; Telstra’s attempts to provide access to Foxtel content through its T-Box platform — in short, Telstra’s attempts to leverage its Foxtel relationship through any other avenue than simply providing the telecommunications network for Foxtel to sell pay TV — have broadly failed. In fact, Foxtel is probably experiencing more success offering its services through Microsoft’s stand-alone XBOX 360 platform right now than it is through Telstra’s competing platforms.

Now that we’ve established that ISPs don’t do content very well, the key question which needs to be asked is why. On this front, I think it’s appropriate to go to a quote from Walter Isaacson’s Steve Jobs biography. This is vintage Jobs, speaking about the recording industry and why it couldn’t get its own online music store off the ground:

“When I went to Pixar, I became aware of a great divide. Tech companies don’t understand creativity. They don’t appreciate intuitive thinking, like the ability for an A&R guy at a music label to listen to a hundred artists and have a feeling for which five might be successful. They think that creative people just sit around on couches all day and are undisciplined, because they’ve not seen how driven and disciplined the creative folks at places like Pixar are.

On the other hand, music companies are completely clueless about technology. They think they can just go out and hire a few tech folks, but that would be like Apple trying to hire people to produce music. We’d get second-rate A&R people, just like the music companies ended up with second-rate tech people. I’m one of the few people who understands how producing technology requires initiation and creativity, and how producing something artistic takes real discipline.”

What’s happening right now in Australia’s telecommunications sector is that the ISPs and telcos are, as Jobs said about the record-labels, hiring second-rate people to enter industries which they don’t understand. The fundamental business of telcos is to provide telecommunications carriage services; not to provide content services. And consequently, telco people just don’t understand the content industry. Telco people think of everything through the lens of their network infrastructure; cables, routers, datacentres. But they don’t think about the content itself — the content, for a telco person, is just something carried on their network.

But providing content isn’t about getting a network right and bundling content onto it. It’s about making that content available wherever a customer wants it, in whatever format they want it; no matter what underlying network may deliver that content. The birth of the Internet has ensured that content has become disaggregated from the network layer that delivers it; and very few customers want to go back to the bad old days where the two are tied irrevocably together, as they are with Foxtel.

Now, I don’t want to argue that the content industry is getting this right either. It has been exhaustively documented right now that Australians are getting a rough deal when it comes to obtaining TV and film content on-line, on-demand and in a timely and affordable manner. But the answer to that problem is not going to come from Australia’s ISP industry.

As the US and UK have also exhaustively demonstrated with companies like Netflix, Apple and Amazon, the solution to that problem will come from a new category of companies which sit in the middle between content owners and consumers, with their service to be provided on top of telecommunications networks, but with no need for an explicit relationship with the providers of those networks. Quickflix founder Stephen Langsford, whose company sits squarely in the middle of this new industry category, nailed this concept in a speech last week; he’s perhaps one of the first executives in Australia to do so publicly.

The Quickflix executive said the best option for Australian consumers was a streaming platform which would offer an unlimited “all you can view” movie and TV streaming service for a single monthly price across any device or platform. This, he said, was an important point because currently in Australia, most companies locked customers in to a particular device, which he said limited the number of consumers who would take up such services. This is the model which has driven Netflix to a level in the US where it accounts for 20-30 percent of all Internet traffic in the country. And it is the model which will see paid Internet video succeed in Australia.

Ironically, Langsford’s speech was given at the same conference where iiNet and Telstra were hyping up their own Internet video options. I wonder if many in the audience appreciated the subtle difference — which will mean the difference between success and failure — between the different philosophies presented.

I suspect not.

Update: This article has been updated with correct T-Box figures. We had estimated about 100,000 sales over the past several years; the correct figure is 300,000.

I agree. The ISPs see content as just another network layer, to be added like VoIP. But the truth is it’s not; and despite commonly cited industry wisdom, these kind of “triple play” services are broadly failing across the industry. I don’t think ISPs understand why at this point, but I do think companies like Quickflix and Netflix do. I am certain that Microsoft and Sony, with their gaming content networks (also overlaid on top of ISP networks) understand this well as well.

It is bad new for companies which are seeking massively enhanced revenues and profit margins, but it’s not bad news at all if you think about ISPs as infrastructure businesses, with slowly growing revenues and steady margins. The truth is, that unless a whole new category of network transit is opened up, as we’ve seen with 3G and now 4G services, high growth is not really possible in telecommunications.

If you accept that, these are still good businesses. And, as all the ISPs know, margin can also be improved via taking costs out of the back-end of the business, getting better aggregated backhaul deals and so on.

If you have an iPhone, a Zune subscription is and Windows Phone Marketplace purchases are useless, and vice-versa.

Though I have have a Zune subscription and bought many apps, I’m more inclined to buy services that are platform independent, so if I chose to switch, I won’t lose my purchases, e.g. I buy CDs, not just because I like shiny things, but because it doesn’t tie me in to a particular smartphone platform.

You have the wrong device if you can’t get music from anywhere you like and load it onto the device. That’s why I like the iPhone as I can get my music from anywhere I want and load it up and connect it to my house, my car or TV for a seamless experience without wires ;)

I run Windows 7 on my computer, which I use as an HTPC, running Media Centre for my PVR, although I’m currently looking at building an Ubuntu or XBMC box.

I will soon be purchasing an ASUS Transformer Infinity.

Now show me how I can have all my content from iTunes (which, by the way, I would rather slice my tongue on glass than use, because it takes 45 seconds to load on my Core i7, 6GB Ram system….)…..

Oh wait, I can’t. It’s great if you’re in Apple land- But I, like more than half of ALL Australians using a smartphone, am not. And like more than 80% of ALL Australians using a PC, not a Mac.

Content MUST be ubiquitous, regardless of the manufacturer of the consumption hardware, if competition is to work. Apple have made it look easy up until now, because they pushed fast into the market with the first real ecosystem. But ecosystems break down once people realise there are other ways, maybe better ways to have their cake and eat it too. Once Quickflix takes off here, Apple will be given a run for its money in Movies, and streaming radio services like Rdio and Grooveshark are already cutting into Apple’s iTunes, slowly yes, but relentlessly.

Providing good hardware is the domain of manufacturers, like Apple, Samsung, HP etc. Providing good content is the domain of content providers, like Quickflix. And providing the reliable, fast network between them is the domain of ISP’s. All 3 should remain separate, each producing quality products/services in their own categories.

Show me a company, globally, who’ve combined this successfully? I can’t think of one. There are successful network providers: AT&T, China Mobile, Telstra. There are successful content providers: Netflix, BBC. And there are successful hardware manufacturers: Apple, Samsung etc. The only one who has had any success putting 2 together is Apple and, well, frankly, a monopoly is not a choice, so it prohibits its own growth after a threshold amount.

From a pure technical point of view – (and wearing my propeller hat) – I think it is important that ISPs do tackle the issue of IPTV as a service head on. The propeller hat wearers are obviously interested in such services – (else we wouldn’t be discussing it) – but are the sorts of people who don’t want to be locked into a proprietary set-top box like a T-box.

We want to be able to connect the stream to Slingboxes, Windows Media Centre, to MythTV solutions, to Ubuntu TV solutions, or directly to IP-capable television sets.

All we want is the multicast stream we can use anywhere we want. Even on computers with appropriate media player software. The openness and freedom we love and enjoy.

However, the non-propeller-hat wearers – (which, lets be honest, is most of the population really) – are going to want simple set-top boxes configured and installed by someone else.

They don’t want the hassle, and don’t have the skills to deal with the hassle.

You’re right, Michael, but most of those non-propeller-hat-wearers don’t see ISPs as the providers of these set-top boxes. They see those devices being platform/ISP agnostic and coming ffrom JB Hi-Fi.

The general population does not believe that ISPs are content providers. They believe that they are … shock! Internet service providers. That is their nature. Content is something completely different — not just another network layer.

Whatever Apple has up it’s sleeve, it’s clear it will leverage the Apple iTunes Store.

Given Netflix, Amazon and other content providers are still going, one has to presume Apple is far from saturating the market place.

The thing is, you cannot (yet) decouple the ISP from content. Unlike the US, quotas and limits are still the prevalent way to handle capacity. Without something like Multicast, and without ISP involvement, the “non quota impacting” service is a pipe dream.

This is across a number of technologies, I’m referring to fibre, cable, copper and wireless here.

ISP’s are still part of the solution; FetchTV is an example of the “plug-and-go” model Michael points to. Because when you put aside the propellor-headed folk, a large percentage of the market is STILL going to want a box.

This is why Apple is still selling an AppleTV appliance, and not expecting everyone to use an iPad.

Because you still need a delivery mechanism for a large chunk of the potential consumer; a lot of content distributors still maintain a requirement of content restriction.

I watch a stack of StarCraft videos (televised games from the US and Korea). Some of these I pay the provider (GomTV.net) for on a subscription basis. Others come from YouTube and are ad-supported. In no way is my ISP involved in any of this activity, other than I pay it for underlying network transit.

I watch a bunch of online content as well. Streamed content and a full IPTV service (multiple linear channels, on demand tv and movies, EPG, etc) are not really the same thing. :)

Again, when you step aside from being a geek, and look at the bigger picture, the average consumer has advanced that far yet. They still struggle to figure out an EPG, recording stuff is only easy if there’s a single button and ordering stuff online? ooo – people might steal mah credit cards.

Remember, it wasn’t that long ago that Blockbuster tried to launch an online content offering. It died.

CASPA seems to be still going, but without ISPs un-metering the content, it’s anyone’s guess how well it have performed.

Understand, I am all for open access, but until some of the more structured services get a foot hold in the market and Distributors actually warm to successes, more open, dynamic ways to access content aren’t going to magically happen. :)

The thing is, you cannot (yet) decouple the ISP from content. Unlike the US, quotas and limits are still the prevalent way to handle capacity. Without something like Multicast, and without ISP involvement, the “non quota impacting” service is a pipe dream.

While that’s true today, it’s kinda irrelevant.

You can go out right now and buy an ISP service with a 300 Gbyte quota. That’s enough to stream 1.5 Mbps/sec day-in day-out for a month. That’s a standard definition TV channel.

Of course, nobody wants to use 100% of their internet link to supply one TV with bandwidth, but remember that 2 years ago you couldn’t buy that 300 Gbyte quota at all. I reckon quota growth is accelerating quickly, bandwidth prices are dropping precipitously, and it isn’t going to be very long before the typical commodity internet service comes with a quota that’s so big as to be meaningless for any practical purpose.

How many years will it be before the top-of-the-line 1000 Gbyte quotas that some ISPs offer as a bit of a joke right now (estimated take-up: 0%) are cheap enough to fit the $60 per month bracket? Betcha it happens before the NBN’s build cycle is complete.

At that point you have enough bandwidth to run high-def 24×7 all month…

… which you won’t want to do anyway, because content delivery is moving to an “on-demand” model.

Quotas aren’t the issue here. Licensing is. As soon as a content aggregator like Apple or Netflix makes serious inroads into Australia with proper subscription television services, ISP-supplied IPTV will be ancient history.

We’re one signature on one contract away from that happening. Who’ll be first?

Agree with Mark N. The best name I’ve heard for conventional TV is “appointment TV’ – and who really ever wants to have to make appointments? I’d much rather see my doctor exactly when it would suit me, and I’d much rather watch my TV programs the same way.

What is more likely to happen is the sweetener arrangements with ISPs with content companies. Freezone content like iView is with a number of ISPs, or bundled rates from a number of different ISP with multicast IPTV services like we are seeing with FetchTV.

Access to content is the issue – frankly the current FetchTV (English) offering is crap, the release of extra channels from Foxtel’s grip will help but it doesnt solve the problem that it still cannot access a large portion of the movie market and basically has no sport, two major drivers in customer uptake

If the likes of FetchTV can get access to content, IPTV allows them from to move away from linear channels (which currently the Foxtel solution doesnt) to library on-demand or live on-demand (like the Hulu’s of the world)

I agree with others here that FetchTV has a content problem, the big ticket content that people want to watch is not really available on the platform yet. Part of this is the massive chunks of content locked up in exclusivity deals that are only just starting to expire, part is the fact that it is a brand new platform and serviced where they don’t want to buy off more than they can chew. This problem will go away in the medium term, Simon Hackett gave us a teaser today: http://whrl.pl/Rda75Z . The problem will always be sport, rights to that are hard to get and expensive.

Another problem is technology, you get the most out of the box on non-Telstra DSLAMS. This will lock out massive chunks of the ISPs customer base until the NBN rolls around. Telstra don’t have this problem with T-Box.

The last problem that can be easily fixed is marketing, I don’t think many people are aware of what the service is.

Personally, I have FetchTV ‘Lite’ at home. $10 a month for a pretty awesome PVR I can control with my smartphone from anywhere is incredible. I will grab the full package as soon as iinet turn on the ‘Entertainment’ option in my exchange (‘soon’ apparently) and would happily pay for extra channels Simon mentioned on reasonable terms. I can’t get Austar in my unit, but in the medium to long term Fetch looks great for what I watch.

I wouldn’t worry too much about the ISPs losing money on the system, the company backing Fetch is using Australia as a test bed to roll out IPTV in their vast non-English territories, so they are probably happy to take some losses here to write off as R&D.

Not sure that ISP’s ‘fooling themselves’ about triple plays is something that ISp’s actaully carte about. Their business models are being commodified and they need some more income streams – IPTV looks like it might be one of those pure and simple. People aren’t going to pay much for the connection today, they’ll only pay the $80-$100 a month nowadays if they get something more – unlimited calls, IPTV etc… They may not be good at content but they are damn sure they’re going to try and hitch their wagons.

Also, I don’t think Telcos are as bad as you say they are at content. The past attempt were constrained by handset ability rather than content failures – your examples are all pre-smartphone, pre-large screen, pre-ipad. While iiNet’s Fetch and Telstra’s T-Box are not making huge waves, they are pretty good services for those that use them and are early entrants in a revolutionary change in TV watching behaviour. Content people also understand that tapping into an ISP’s customer base is a good place to use their abilities – so ISPs having sub-standard content approaches may not continue too much longer into the future.

Anyways, thanks for the thoughts and bring on direct OTT content delivery of everything always.

Those guys do triple play (quad play actually as they do mobile as well) very well and a huge amount of there business is based on IPTV.

I personally think (and i could be wrong) that it is in an ISP’s interest to have its customers using their IPTV services instead of consuming the same bandwidth for another service. Whether they can do it well is another matter but it is clearly possible in the case of Free.

There biggest selling point in my opinion- the HBO content is an absolute joke. No game of thrones, only season 1 of true blood. I understand that was maybe the best they could get but if so why even bother.

If my isp bundled in some sort of iptv service at a subsidized cost and made it super easy to set up i can see myself using it occasionally. Paying monthly for B grade movies and a truly average set of tv shows is never going to be enticing, especially when all that usage still counts towards my download quota.

The major reason why ISPs and (particularly) mobile network operators are so interested in getting into content is because of declining revenues and increasing OPEX in the network. For example: voice revenue, the long-time stronghold of network revenue for operators around the world has been in steady decline for years now, and it’s now beginning to hit where it really hurts. These operators are only doing what they can to try and stem the flow of red-coloured digits in their balance sheets, and while I don’t blame them for making the effort, I agree that it’s the wrong approach for them to take.

What they need to do is start looking for ways to get data usage to turn more than a few measly bucks. I’m not sure what the decisive answer is on the question of how to do that, but things like removal of free access to social media sites (all three mobile network operators currently offer this) can only work in their favour.

Your agenda to declare success or failure on the basis of scant evidence or without justification is interesting. I suppose thats all about trying to get above the noise floor by making bold statements.

Lets see…

First, about that ‘abysmal’ run rate for iiNet with fetchtv. In your piece, above that, you just finished making it clear that major subscription TV channels have been locked up by Foxtel until about ‘now’ – no fault of iiNet.

You also know the fetchtv platform has developed massively over that time, and right now the service deployed looks way different to the one that was in the market two years back.

As a result the first two years of their sale of this service aren’t really the point – its the next two years that matters.

So lets look at the current run rate for Fetchtv with someone who launched only a few months ago, at the pointy end of Fetchtv evolving into a real player in the market. Do some research and dig up the futures for how many MeTV (a.k.a. fetchtv) services Optus are selling every month, and for the trajectory of those sales.

The word ‘abysmal’ isn’t at all in the frame there. Its going off like a frog in a sock.

As another perspective: What percentage of the Australian population did Foxtel sell their service to in the first two years of their operation, mate? Ever looked that up?

Next: Where is your logic in declaring T-Box a failure at ‘only’ 100,000 boxes, let alone when you corrected your own guesses to 300,000 (hence showing that your read of the market is out by a factor of 3x).

With the foxtel/austar concessions opening up access to previously exclusive channels over the next two years, with the NBN finally starting to turn up in the real world over that same two year period, with Optus and iiNet (two of the four major players in the market) now taking on T-Box with the fetchtv platform, its a bit early to pronounce the death of any of these business models or any of the specific offerings in the Australian market right now. The locks have only just come off of these things in real terms.

In summary:

It will take a good ten years to see the true winners and losers here, and the last two years isn’t a good forward indicator of the next two.

Is a multi-cast AVC linked to a particular multi-cast domain or can it be used to access many multi-cast domains? How does an end customer acquire a multi-cast AVC? To a non-techie like me it seems a content provider will set up the multi-cast domain for their content and then sell the multi-cast AVC for the end customer to access that content. If that’s right though the end customer would need a separate multi-cast AVC for each content provider.

If content is being provided via an internet service, is there a point at which take up of the service causes the CVC cost to become an issue? For example, if 50% of users are streaming HD video at peak times, how much CVC capacity (at $20pm per Mbps) does each user require? afaik Bevan Slattery’s question on WP has never been answered.

I can see that FTTP is well suited to delivering video content and I can see being able to select from several content providers via a TV set, especially for on demand content, is likely to be appealing. I just can’t understand how it will work on the NBN.

I totally agree – telcos should be invisible, like water or power companies. Provide a fat pipe with super reliability at commodity pricing. Stop stuffing around trying to be media players when the real money is in infrastructure and becoming a utility.

Being one of those propeller heads I’m appalled that there is no simple service available in Australia for simple content streaming.

I torrent the shows that I want to watch but I would much rather stream that content. If I could stream tv shows then my hard drive wouldnt be filled up, I wouldnt have to worry about finding a good quality version and I wouldnt have to wait for the download to finish.
I dont need any company to decide content for me, I can find that for myself.
If Joe average needs to have their life dictated to, by all means, set up some channels for them.

ISP’s would have no trouble setting up a service like this and theres no reason why they cant do it.
The reason we DONT have something like this is because content providers – ISP’s included – dumb down their services in an effort to make it easier to digest and as you say, do not do a good job.

There is so much potential for this market and all the providers are doing is trying to limit the way that their content is consumed so that they have a captive audience to make money from.
I say that they should forget totalitarianism and just make a good freaking service, the rest will follow.

they don’t need to become providers, they need to get together and buy one of these companies or start their own, and run it as a seperate business. After all even though you have the like of netflix and all the others they are really little more then resellers of hollywood. It would be in the ISP’s best interest to own the channel from start to finish given how huge the bandwidth it will eventually consume.

And people are lazy, they want one bill not 3-5 seperate bills for phone/net/vids and whatever else will be onsold on the great internet once/if the nbn comes to fruition.

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